Mushroom
Mushrooms are the fruiting body offungi, which feed primarily on decomposing plant material, aided by their ability to produce cellulose. The body of the fungus is called mycelium and its individual parts are microscopic. Since the fungus is usually dispersed over a relatively large underground area it is rarely noticed. In nature some species of fungus may have a body that spreads over hundreds of square miles. Because mushrooms are fungi, they are usually placed in a Kingdom of their own apart from plants and animals. Mushrooms contain no chlorophyll and most are considered sacrophytes. That is, they obtain their nutrition from metabolizing non living organic matter. This means they break down and “eat” dead plants.
The mycelium stores nutrients and other essential compounds, and when enough material is stored and the conditions are right they start to fruit - produce mushrooms.
There are many species of mushroom. Some are edible and are widely used for their distinctive flavor in various cuisines, especially European and Oriental foods. Other mushrooms can be poisonous to varying degrees, and some contain powerful mind-bending drugs. For this reason, it is unwise to eat wild mushrooms without a definite knowledge of their species. There are no reliable general rules for identifying dangerous mushrooms, they must be positively identified.
Fungi Gardening Glossary Permaculture
- Snippet from Wikipedia: Mushroom
A mushroom or toadstool is the fleshy, spore-bearing fruiting body of a fungus, typically produced above ground, on soil, or on its food source. Toadstool generally denotes one poisonous to humans.
The standard for the name "mushroom" is the cultivated white button mushroom, Agaricus bisporus; hence, the word "mushroom" is most often applied to those fungi (Basidiomycota, Agaricomycetes) that have a stem (stipe), a cap (pileus), and gills (lamellae, sing. lamella) on the underside of the cap. "Mushroom" also describes a variety of other gilled fungi, with or without stems; therefore the term is used to describe the fleshy fruiting bodies of some Ascomycota. The gills produce microscopic spores which help the fungus spread across the ground or its occupant surface.
Forms deviating from the standard morphology usually have more specific names, such as "bolete", "puffball", "stinkhorn", and "morel", and gilled mushrooms themselves are often called "agarics" in reference to their similarity to Agaricus or their order Agaricales. By extension, the term "mushroom" can also refer to either the entire fungus when in culture, the thallus (called mycelium) of species forming the fruiting bodies called mushrooms, or the species itself.